Tasha loads the gun.

“Move that butt!”, she yells.

“No. What can you do? You can shoot us. It doesn’t matter. We’re not going with you anyway”, Justine replies quietly, holding her chin up.

I clench my jaw. I really didn’t want to sacrifice them. Plus, we’d better have some of them alive. But we can’t waste any more time in this place and Justine is not giving us any other choice.

So I kneel down beside Jack Sanders. I take a look at the small screen on his waistband of TNT. The numbers are still flashing, on and off, on and off: 3.33.

We would have had three minutes and thirty-three seconds once the button on the remote had been pushed. The bomb is a basic one, quite simple to defuse. Four colored wires, a few electric contacts. But I don’t have time to deal with it. I take the remote from Sanders’ motionless hand and Carmen recovers the other remote from under the drinks cabinet.

“Let’s go”, I murmur, getting up and feeling a sting of pain hitting my side.

”I look at the cross
Then I look away
Give you the gun
Blow me away…”

We move as one across the huge house, our steps stomping heavily on the floor. The only noise we hear is that of our uneven, frantic breath.

Cassandra’s hand holding mine, Shane’s hand holding Carmen’s, Tasha’s hand holding Alice’s, three nice couples of people covered with blood and sweat, six kind people upset and exhausted and almost ended assassinated.

“What time is it?”, I pant, ignoring a new wave of sharp pain in the depth of my side.

“3.09 a.m.”, Tasha replies glancing rapidly at her watch.

And the first bomb explodes above our heads. We bend down instinctively, all of us, as pieces of plasterwork and wood rain over us. Walking beside the long marble Beaufort staircase that connects the low ground to the first floor, Shane points at the clouds of thick, grey smoke invading the hallway from above.

“Move peeps, move!”, I hear Alice yell, and we do our best to hurry up.

The mansion seems a maze, and we really have to snoop around for a while before we finally reach for the front door.

Obviously it’s locked. Can we be luckier than this?

“Shit!”, Carmen exclaims throwing her hands in the air.

Tasha aims the gun at the door lock and shoots. A tinkling sound of uprooted metal, the crackling noise of the wood giving in, and we’re out.

At 3.13, the whole low ground explodes, too, and we’re swept away.

”I’ve watched a change
In you
It’s like you never
Had wings
Now you feel
So Alive
I’ve watched you change.
Now you feel Alive
You Feel Alive
I’ve watched you change
It’s like you never
Had wings”*

We’re on the ground, coughing and checking if all of our body parts are still where they’re supposed to be. My eyes are weeping badly. Blindly, I touch around, clasp to the gravel on the road until I grab somebody’s hand. It’s Shane’s.

“Hey buddy, are you there? Still attached to this?”, I cough, shaking her hand in the air.

“Yeah…”, she replies, coughing back, “And I’ve got Carmen, too”. She raises her other hand, showing me that her fingers are still tightly interweaved with those of her wife. Carmen blinks her eyelids repeatedly and spits on the ground. She must be chewing dust.

“Folks, I’ve got Tash!”, Alice yells, getting up and smoothing down her t-shirt.

“And I’ve got Cass…. Jesus”, Tasha adds croakily, running her hand all over her face.

“Alright, let’s go…”, Carmen murmurs, dragging Shane along the front yard and toward the gate.

TBC

**

SOUNDTRACK:
* “Change (In The House Of Flies)” (Deftones)